The Vanishing Uranium

President Bush cannot be pleased to know that his State of the Union address last January included an ominous report about Iraq that turns out to have been based on forged documents. The incident is an embarrassment for Mr. Bush and for the nation, and he should now be leaning on his aides to explain how they let fabricated information about Iraq's nuclear weapons program slip into his speech. The answer might help explain whether Washington deliberately distorted intelligence to rally the nation for the war against Iraq.

In the address, Mr. Bush said the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein had recently tried to get large quantities of uranium from Africa. It is now clear that this accusation was mainly based on counterfeit papers that falsely implied that the West African nation of Niger could be supplying uranium to Iraq. The documents contained obvious factual errors that should have been readily detectable by intelligence analysts.

The Niger uranium story first started making the rounds of Western intelligence agencies late in 2001. The charges seemed plausible because Iraq was known to have been trying to enrich uranium in the late 1980's and Niger was one possible source of uranium fuel. But the supporting documents never checked out. Some bore what was alleged to be the signature of Niger's minister of energy and mines, but the man in question had been out of office many years before the sales negotiations were supposed to have taken place. And any actual sales contracts would have had to be arranged not with Niger's government, but with the international consortium that actually controls the country's entire uranium supply.

The C.I.A. heard about at least some of these problems from a former ambassador with African experience who looked into the matter at the agency's request in early 2002. His report that Niger denied the allegations was passed along to other government agencies, including the White House. But the C.I.A. appears not to have concluded that the story was unreliable. As a result, no effort was made by administration officials to keep it out of speeches and documents dealing with Iraq, including the State of the Union address.

It remains to be seen whether Iraq pursued a nuclear weapons program in recent years. But along with the many other questions that have arisen about Iraq's unconventional arms since the end of the war, the matter of the forged documents needs to be explored fully by Congress and a White House advisory board that reviews the performance of intelligence agencies. The American people are entitled to know as much as possible about factors that influenced Washington's decision to go to war. It is especially troubling when the president is put in the position of making alarming claims about a nuclear weapons program that do not stand up to serious scrutiny.